A website by Freedom for Animals
A website by Freedom for Animals
by Rosemary Amey
A recent article in NOW magazine (The Animal Lib Trap by Mike Smith, April 24-30, 2003) contains substantial misinformation about Freedom for Animals that needs to be corrected.
Smith says that Freedom for Animals thinks that Native people should be left to starve. Obviously, that is not our position. In our brief interview, I said that if we were to get involved in Nunavut animal issues, we would work with the people of Nunavut to find solutions, but that as an animal rights group we would have to rule out any solution that involves killing animals. The whole point of our campaign against WWF is that it is inconsistent, and immoral, to fundraise in Toronto by telling people their money will be used to save wildlife, and then take that money to Nunavut and say, "We support killing wildlife."
I also pointed out, during the very brief interview, that World Wildlife Fund supports hunting in general, not just hunting done by Inuit people in Nunavut.
Smith also fell for the hunting apologists' line that this is a cultural conflict of naive urbanites vs. Native and rural communities. If he had asked, which he didn't, he would have learned that I myself am from a rural background, and that Freedom for Animals co-founder Suzanne Lahaie (who was also listed as a contact on the news release) is a woman of part-Native descent from Northern Ontario. Unlike Monte Hummel, however, we don't think that coming from a rural background makes us superior to people who have been city-dwellers all their lives. Perhaps Hummel's contempt for urban Canadians explains his willingness to mislead them by posing as an animal protection charity, then using donations intended to save wild animals to advocate killing them.
Finally, Smith alleges that animal rights activists do not care about environmental issues. If he had asked us, which he didn't, he would have learned that Freedom for Animals has been involved in environmental activism, for example, in opposing the so-called "Lands for Life" program. As our mission statement, which appears on our home page, says, "We regard all forms of oppression and exploitation as inter-related: animal abuse, human rights violations, and ecological destruction."
Clearly, one of the most important ways we can help animals is to ensure that they have safe, unpolluted environments to live in. However, unlike groups such as World Wildlife Fund, we believe that wild animals and wild spaces have inherent value, and should not be treated as mere resources to be used and abused by humans.
Click here for another response to the article, by Michael Alvarez-Toye.